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I’ve been stewing on this post for a while, letting it marinate if you will. Staff meal. Or shaft meal as I like to call it. My krytonite. My grear grinder. Why do I get so grumpy about staff meal you ask? Maybe I’m just naturally bitter. Or maybe because I get annoyed when servers order food after I spent my little free time making them staff meal. I’ll go with I’m just a Bitter Betty. Anyway, for those of you who are unfamiliar, it’s a common meal shared by cooks, servers, dishwashers, etc before or after service everyday. Those of us in the restaurant industry don’t get a dinner break folks. No hour lunch to run to Bojangles and grab a chicken biscuit. Generally I’m in the building all day, I might leave to get a quick caffeine fix. Hell, you’re lucky to even to eat for 5 minutes. My first real meal of the day might at midnight. I chose this career right? Most of the time you’re hunched over grabbing a bite in between tickets or when you’re lucky enough to have a few spare moments of inactivity. Generally staff meal is made with leftovers that are hanging around the walk in, stuff you have extra of, and cheaper cuts of meat (i.e. scraps from butchering proteins). Now it might not sound appetizing, but you’d be surprised what you can create with just a little creativity or thinking outside the box. One pan baked pastas, meatloaf, stir fry, and of course tacos are all popular choices for staff meal. They’re easy and always a crowd pleaser. Kitchens have become so culturally diverse that I’ve had some of the best Mexican food at work, not at some popular Tex-Mex fusion joint. Tamales, mole, pozole, chilaquiles, you name it. When I worked at an Italian place I used to make pizzas for the kitchen, and then bribe backwaits with said pizzas to take out the trash. You gotta do what you gotta do. http://www.laweekly.com/restaurants/staff-meals-10-la-chefs-restaurateurs-recall-the-best-and-worst-2379836 Now I’ve worked in places where there was no staff meal and servers could order food at a discounted rate during down times, other places where we made staff meal once service slowed down, maybe around 9 or 10 at night, and other places where we made meal before service even started, around 5. I’d much rather do it before service. By the time the rush dies down the last thing I want to do is cook more. I want a beverage. People talk about the importance of sharing a meal before service, keeping morale up, comraderie blah blah. I get it. It is significant because the shift is long and demanding. I do like staff meal despite my crabby demeanor. But servers can tell when you just throw cooler scraps in a pot and call it soup. Or take whatever meat you have, serve it with tortillas, and call it tacos. I’m guilty as charged for doing that sometimes; there only so many hours in a day and staff meal isn’t always my top priority. But front of the house does appreciate when you go the extra mile to make an awesome staff meal. If you feed them, they will run food. And the best thing about leftover staff dinner? It becomes staff lunch. Winning. Shit, I’ve always wanted front of the house to make the kitchen staff meal once. Just Google and I found a restaurant in Californina where the FOH does every Sunday. http://www.starchefs.com/cook/savory/staff-meal/manresa-fried-chicken Staff meal might have once been a second thought of a busy day, just serve ’em frozen chickem nuggets or leftovers from bruch that were going to get thrown out. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-the-gourmet-staff-meal-1455666198 But there is something necessary and vital about stopping for a few minutes each day to have a meal together as a kitchen or a staff. Just a few moments of down time can lighten the mood and recharge your batteries. The day is already long and hard enough that those few moments when you can stop are critical to maintaing your sanity. The actor Geoffrey Rush once said, “I always had a fantasy of being a chef, because I like kitchen life.” Cheers foodies!